What's happening at school?

Students throughout the school from Years 1-7 are concerned about the plight of the oranguatn. Ever since we adopted baby Ruthie the children are following Ruthie's progress and noticing the increasing number of orphans at the sanctuaries. If you would like to donate to our cause please contact us or send a donation to the school, we will make sure it goes straight to the deforesACTION global movement to buy back the land and rebuild the rainforests for the orangutans and the people of Borneo.

What is DeforestACTION?

In his book “High Noon: 20 Global Issues, 20 Years to Solve Them”, former World Bank ex Vice-President Jean François Rischard outlines a new approach to global problem solving that involves students building global networks and collaborating to find solutions and act on them. Rischard argues that the fate of future generations depends on our capacity to quickly and effectively address 20 pressing global issues.

Inspired by a keynote given by Rischard at the 6th Microsoft Partners in LearningAsia Pacific Regional Innovative Education Forum, held March 2010 in Singapore, participating schools discussed the need for new approaches to global problems. Students expressed a desire for more relevant, project-based learning experiences. Teachers and school leaders expressed a desire for a structured global collaboration methodology and supporting resources.

Led by Taking IT Globaland supported by Microsoft, a regional pilot project was proposed to tackle the global problem of deforestation. Teachers and students from across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region were given the opportunity to present their ideas about what collaborative project they could work on to address this pressing environmental issue. Students presented their ideas on Taking IT Global’s online learning platform and were given one week to vote on the two most popular solutions. The winning solutions were:

Raising awareness of how palm oil production (and products that contain palm oil) contribute to global warming, habitat loss, destruction of species and other global problems.
Both solutions were combined to create the ‘DeforestACTION’ project – designed by students to raise awareness about the destruction of important native forests and the commercial exploitation of these forests for the production of palm oil. Young people across the planet are seeking support to reclaim at-risk forests and preserve them for future generations and the future of the planet.

Schools across the APAC region worked on the following initiatives as part of the DeforestACTION pilot:

Education, advocacy and outreach to help school communities understand the issue of deforestation and the urgency of action.

A united global fundraising effort to protect a major identified tract of land. The plan involves providing alternative forms of income to the local land owners – in this case – the purchase value of the land.
This extract is taken from the deforestACTION web site at http://dfa.tigweb.org/.

For updates on Ruthie visit

Waggrakine Primary students have set some goals for awareness and fundraising by July 2010 and we urge the public and school community to join with us and help save the orangutans and the rainforests of the world - say no to climate change. For donations to the schools fundraising or direct to BOS please contact us or BOS Australia.

Orangutan videos suitable for K-7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMiqXVwGZ0w
Enjoy this brief glimpse into the lives of Fio, Grendon, Kesi and Lomon. They live at the BOS Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue Center. Their mothers were murdered by the palm oil and timber industries. Please visit http://redapes.org to learn more about the crisis facing orangutans in the wild and see how you can become adoptive parents and make a difference!

http://vimeo.com/1949016
Diego is one of the 33 baby orangutans at the nursery at Nyaru Menteng, the biggest rescue center for orangutans in the world. Many of the babies witnessed the killing of their mother, because a baby orangutan will cling to its mother constantly for the first year of its life and even after that a mother will never leave her baby alone.

Yr 3/4-7 suitable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLYH7rNPW_8&NR=1
includes Willie Smit talking about the project and what they are trying to achieve, talks about the forest, the new economy for the people, the nothing sad visually

http://redapes.org/about-us/willie
Willie Smits project, this page has a number of videos suitable for upper years as they talk in depth about climate change, regrowing the forest, employing the people